The complexities of human relationships, either to each
other or to a spiritual other, thematically link the four works presented
by the Lyon Opéra Ballet in the Ted Shawn Theatre at Jacob's Pillow.

Stamping Ground, choreographed by Jirí Kylián
and set to a toccata for percussion instruments by Carlos Chavez, features
seven dancers costumed in black bathing suits. The audience is clued
in by the pre-curtain talk that Kylián's witnessing of an Aboriginal
dance inspired this work, the title, the choice of score, the flesh
exposing (non) costumes, and the archaic poses. All this harmonizes
into a picture of humans gathered in the dead of a traditionally important
night to celebrate the recurrence of an ancient event. It is an event,
moreover, that opens in silence and flows through a series of solos
for male and female dancers. Although the demi-pliés à
la seconde pull the celebrants into the floor, the image of burning
vitality created by their rippling torso and arms  each dancer
displayed an anatomically impossible flexibility  resisted that
pull. The entrance of the toccata into the dance, on the other hand,
introduces the featured couple, the seventh dancer, and draws individuals
into groups of two, three and more. Here, the ceremony, if it is one,
begins in earnest, and the chase and combative nature of the duets and
trios combine with the centerpiece couple to suggest that Stamping
Ground retells a creation story. If this is so, then for the moment
of the celebration the people of the Stamping Ground embody their
past, present, and future. Moreover, if this fanciful idea should hold,
they are the fissionable material that will launch or re-launch the
story of their world and its chain of events on its irrevocable path.

Critical Mass, choreographed by Russell Maliphant
and set to music by Richard English (with additions from Andy Cowton)
mixes rather than separates, ideas held within both the 'nuclear' definition
and common usage of the phrase "critical mass". Set on two
barefoot male dancers, costumed rather blandly in blue trousers and
shirt, the work divides into three sections or relationships and a coda.
The relationships suggested by the choice of movement and the use of
space fall (roughly) into the categories of the combative, loving, and
cooperative. It is this public examination of male-male relationships
that, one thinks, fulfils the common use of critical mass. It is as
if the weight of this longish piece means to bring the subject (or issue)
of male-male relationships to a point that requires action or resolution.
Although, the piece is darkly lit, the first section  the combative
 offers the clearest picture of the work's structure, repeating
chains of phrases slowly varied over time. The structure looks the way
the work of Philip Glass, or appropriately to the program, Ravel's Boléro
sounds.

The allure of the Menuet from Le Tombeau de Couperin
and the Pavane pour une infante défunte by Ravel creates a musical
setting for and informs the musicality of Un Ballo, choreographed
by Kylián. By contrast, Meryl Tankard's meditation on Boléro
fixes a mixed media and relentless nightmare upon Ravel's rich and coloristic
orchestration. Both pieces center on the subject of dancing, i.e. a
formal ball and a lethal Boléro, and both present a dark picture of
male-female relationships. Costumed in black formal attire, the five
couples in Un Ballo look basically ballroom-ish, moving, for
example, in unison and describing expansive partnering. But,as the ladies
fall or collapse the piece turns sinister. In this sense, the ladies
costumed in formal attire, the males in black attending to their troubled
partners (or perhaps the troublesome males continuing to hector their
partners), along with the music of Ravel bring Suspended Women,
choreographed by Jacqulyn Buglisi, to mind. Additionally, the unflattering
pose that concludes the work, i.e. males on their hands and knees facing
the audience, yet obscured by the gowns of the ladies who lie, facing
upward, upon the backs of the males, shaping a number four with their
legs, undoes the elegance of all the preceded it. Whether ironic, meaningles,
or other, Un Ballo, nevertheless, offers a variety of pleasures.

Boléro, in spite of the repeated image of headless
dancers, excites one's imagination via the ever-modulating images and
patterns cast upon the scrim or screen that separates performers from
the audience. Ironically, the power of Boléro rests, for this
viewer, in its contrasts of perceptual overloads and deprivation. Although,
Boléro exerts a relentless pressure of sound and colorful images,
one sees, à la Plato's cave, only shadows, silhouettes cast against
the scrim, of the human action. It is a nightmare, yet a thoroughly
engaging one.